We’re Working on PMI’s Foundational Standard in Business Analysis!

I’m excited to announce I’m a contributing core team member to PMI’s foundational standard in business analysis. Our core team is a wonderful group to work with – Laura Paton, Cheryl Lee, Sue Burk, and of course we are tightly aligned with Dave Bieg. PMI has launched a new blog to keep you informed about the development process we are going through. You’ll find early posts that introduce the core team and discuss the value of the standard. Future blog posts will highlight the need to evangelize business analysis work within our organizations and how to generate executive support for business analysis. I’ll tell you we have been at this for a couple months now, brainstorming, writing, listening to communications on social media and other sources, brainstorming, reviewing research, rewriting, debating, deciding, deciding again, writing….and I love where this is headed!

I’ve had a few people ask why I signed up to do yet another one of these massive writing projects! In the last 4 years, I’ve co-authored 2 books (Software Requirements and Visual Models for Software Requirements) and was a core team member to Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide and BABOK, and yet I still keep coming back for more! So I thought, what better place to give my own answer to that. First, by now it has to be obvious, I have a passion for what we do in the business analysis and product management space! Second, I want to share that knowledge to help others grow too – from my research findings in the community to my own experiences I’ve learned from. Third, I love that I too get to grow by nature of thinking through and writing about these topics. So all around it’s a triple win for me.

Now, as for whether we need this new body of work from PMI– obviously I wouldn’t work on it if I didn’t think so! But to be clear, I think the market has asked for it. Their focus is supported by research and has a different perspective than other organizations’ out there. They even found that stakeholders are asking for guidelines about how to do business analysis. Their research points to the fact that projects still aren’t going all that well, but when they have strong business analysis practices, they go better. Anecdotally, I see the exact same thing in many organizations in the F500, so I support the research results are accurate. PMI has used this to make a business case to develop this new standard for business analysis, and I believe in that business case. In fact, the proof is in the pudding to some extent, as they have had really good traction with the BAPG and PMI-PBA which are in 63 countries in just one and a half years! And I know not everyone can see this yet, but this body of knowledge will in fact be different than all the others out there, so that alone adds value in itself.

I have produced a lot of published bodies of work that I think are all very good, but all could be improved upon. If I have anything to do with it, PMI’s will also be very good and probably will also be improved upon as it evolves. But I also think it has the potential to serve an untapped audience and even help previously tapped audiences do better business analysis! You can sign me up for that any day!

About Joy Beatty

Joy Beatty is a Vice President at Seilevel. Joy implements new methodologies and best practices that improve requirements elicitation and modeling. She advises Fortune 500 companies as they build business analysis centers of excellence. Joy has provided training to thousands of business analysts and is CBAP® and PMI-PBA® certified.

Joy is actively involved as a leader in the requirements community. She was part of the core team that developed the most recent version of the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK), as well as Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Business Analysis for Practitioners: A Practice Guide. Additionally, she writes about requirements methodologies in journals, white papers, and blog posts. Joy graduated from Purdue University with Bachelors of Science degrees in both Computer Science and Mathematics. She co-authored Visual Models for Software Requirements, with Seilevel CEO Anthony Chen, and Software Requirements, 3rd Edition with famed Karl Wiegers.

2 Responses to We’re Working on PMI’s Foundational Standard in Business Analysis!

Thank you for your post. I think everyone has been asking how the PMI BA Standard would be different from the other bodies of knowledge or guides by IIBA, IREB, BCS and PMI itself.

I have been a keen researcher of this subject and deliver programs for IIBA CBAP, IREB CPRE, PMI-PBA as welll as BCS exams and I think all these put together address almost the entire spectrum of business analysis.

PMI recently launched the Practice Standard for Business Analysis, which was really well documented, and later, for Requirements Management.

Could you please let me and the community know atleast a few ways in which PMI’s BA Standard would be different from all these references, including it’s own guides? I see all PMI representatives saying that PMI’s BA Standard would be “different”, without any details on how it would be different.

Hey Prassad – thanks for the comment. I wanted to be sure you saw Cheryl’s post about this standard for some answers to your question. Keep in mind PMI isn’t ready to let all the cats out of the bag quite yet! I’ll add briefly here that this standard is not a certification, but I would expect it to support the PMI-PBA. And to compare it to the Business Analysis for Practitoners: A Practice Guide – think of the that as being more “how” and the standard being more of the “what”. Here is Cheryl’s post:http://www.projectmanagement.com/blog/Building-the-Foundation-The-BOK-on-BA/19934/

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